Page:The gold brick (1910).djvu/349

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In 1893, early in the summer, I went down to the capital to argue a case at the June term of the supreme court. In the evening, after a hard day in court, I strolled out Lafayette Street to mollify my nerves. Toward the edge of the town I saw a thin youth walking with a girl. The girl wore a white dress. The evening was balmy. The moon was shining. The lilacs were in bloom, and their odor was on the air. As we passed each other, the youth's appearance struck me as familiar. At the time I thought that he was the boy who used to tend the cigar stand in the St. James, and read Reeves' History of the English Law, whom I had naturally forgotten.

In the spring of 1898—I remember the time, not, of course, because it has anything to do with the boy but because we were then engaged in the track elevation cases—I went over to the Gregory Building one morning to see Judge Goodman, in order to get him to consent to the Updegraff case going over the term. That was a case which involved the doctrine of merger, and I needed some additional time for preparation.

As I entered the offices of Goodman, Peck, Gil-